Author: tcli@andrew.cmu.edu

For my final project, I explored music visualization with the arduino with LEDs and mirrors to create unique visual effects. My project has the ability to visualize music on the go through a 3.5 mm audio jack.

For my final project, I was really interested in music visualization and sound representation so I decided to build an Arduino-controlled LED music visualizer. I got most of my inspiration from the lights in the Hunt library’s stairwell but wanted to make something different.

So I made a light-up infinity mirror from clear acrylic, an LED strip, a 2-way mirror film, and some super-reflective mirror sheets. The lights surrounding the mirror are RGB, fully controlled with the Arduino. The flashing and color changing of the lights correspond to the music in real time.

In order to get music visualization working, I used a microphone that listens to songs played from the speakers and interprets when the bass is running. From then, I just programmed the Arduinos to change the colors of the LEDs depending of the music.

I’m still currently in the stages of figuring out a good beat detection system for the Arduino. Most of the algorithms I have come up with or have found online are either much, much too complicated (designed for a ras. pi.) or extremely insufficient for a good final project. On the other hand, controlling the LEDs as well as utilizing the microphone to analyze inputs is is currently under control.

For the final, I only really seems to have to either find a beat detection algorithm or create my own. Obviously, I would also have to make the infinity mirror as well. Below is the link to what is accomplished so far.

A box-like music visualizer and music player that uses LEDs and mirrors t0 create a a visual representation of music. Users will be able to interact the with the device by changing the colors of the lights as well as being able to use headphone jack enabled devices to select the music being visualized.

LEDs will be attached to the edge of the mirror to recreate this effect. Except 4 will be used to create a 3-dimentional cube full of endless mirrors!

For this assignment, I really wanted to explore the realm of music visualization. So I built a very simple a music visualizer that flashes an LED every time a new note occurs in a given piece of music. The music in the example is J.S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, aka the classic Dracula song for a little Halloween flavor.

My initial prototype just included 1 LED blinking every time the note changed but my final product now has different LEDs for each given note.

The biggest challenge that I had while working on this assignment was that I has to learn how to incorporate an external servo driver for all the LEDs I needed. The reason that I needed to use this driver was because the ardiuno board itself did not support more than 12 pins so more has to be added.

For this assignment, I really wanted to explore the realm of music visualization. So I built a very simple prototype of a music visualizer that flashes an LED every time a new note occurs in a given piece of music. The music in the example is J.S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, aka the classic Dracula song for a little Halloween flavor.

For this assignment, I created the narrative of a turbine worker constantly repairing a turbine that keeps falling down. The turbine reacts unpredictably relaying the fight against nature in order to harness and tame its power.

To improve in the future, i really think that a timing system would be super useful for telling a narrative.

For this project to emulate the emotion of excitement (possible of a young child) using a servo as a representation of physical motion. Two buttons are used increase (give sugar) or decrease (sing lullaby) excitement.